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My company is involved in deploying a Internet Exchange on Highmoor Farm near Bournemouth University and Arts University Bournemouth.

There were many objections to its planning application. There were much more in support once we got on the social media campaign trail. Two can play that game.

I can understand why some might hold the views they do. In the spirit of a bit more openness I shared the date when we would be expecting to move our half-prepped digital exchange unit. I had said that this was part of my 15 year vision. High speed fibre access across Dorset, in terms of BCP Council and Dorset Council area, will enable the connectivity of the 5G trials happening soon.

I was asked about that vision, and here was my reply.

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Hi

I’d be glad to give you a quick whirlwind of my personal vision, which can be a bit stark, but unless we are, we can’t take the positive steps to make things better.

In 15 years’ time my vision is to be in a position to retire and retire safely.

By safely I mean I hope the economy and labour force has not been impacted by the effects of an insular Brexit.

The elephant in the room is that birth figures are slowing down and by Dorset LEP’s research for the Industrial Strategy, by 2040 this region will have a dependency ratio of 1. That means for every person of pensionable age, there is one of working age.

I’ve been using social media for a fair few years to bring a spotlight to Southbourne, mainly for its foodie credentials but also to its small independent businesses. The area seems to be doing well.

My business recently opened up a small office in Pokesdown and I wanted to be better neighbour to the area. I had an idea on my drive home and gave Tony Hughes a call, wondering if it was any good and he loved it. We are all in.

In my mind I just wanted to go ahead and do it. In my mind I was envisaging some videos to raise awareness of the lack of lifts at Pokesdown Station, hence the hashtag punnery, that local community groups have campaigned for a long time and wanted to add the weight of our social media connections. We would cover mental health awareness too. There would be music acts playing on the bridge in support of the fact that music venues are closed, and they have nowhere to play.

Tony reckoned we would get arrested if we did that. Part of me thought that would be good PR but then again, some of my businesses are involved in the law enforcement and security sector, so that probably wouldn’t be the best idea.

Now we are aiming to go live with a streaming music event on Friday 31^st July. This is pop-up, this is ad-hoc so we are working it all out as we go along.

The initially three videos we posted did really well on Facebook. Twitter/YouTube seem to lag way behind on community issues.

We kicked off the month with an interview with Harry Seccombe of Chaplins. Couldn't really start with anybody else.

I keep reading more and more businesses saying that they can work from home now and are either closing their offices or drastically sizing down.

With the pandemic, many businesses, especially those that are phone-based customer services, or digital/creative ones, were able to easily move to their staff working from phone. Things like Cloud services, VOIP phones, laptops and VPNs are the technologies that bring it all together.

I think it's fantastic that it all just happened and that the investment in good IT has made it easy.

Then Zoom, the video conferencing system, came into its own. Business sales continued to be done. Business networking became Zoom meetings.

Lockdown was getting to me and after two months off the booze because of gout, I started doing little videos of me making up cocktails. They got sillier and sillier.

Dry Martini, Reverse Martini, Espresso Martini, Daiquiri and Bloody Mary feature in the vids.

Gordon Fong shaking and a stirring on Instagram